Smith, C. Chris | How the Body of Christ Talks
How the Body of Christ Talks:
Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church
C. Christopher Smith
Paperback: BrazosPress, 2019, 206 pp.
Introduction
In his book, How the Body of Christ Talks, C. Christopher Smith asks, “How do we learn to talk together in our churches when we have been formed by a culture that goes to great lengths to avoid conversation?” (8) In answer to this question, Smith invites communities to consider afresh what it means to be a church that intentionally converses together, not just as an ancillary habit, but as a central way of being.
The book is divided into three parts:
In the first section, Smith roots conversation in the being of the triune God before providing some practical tips and types of conversation that are helpful for churches.
Part two is devoted to the spirituality and practices needed for the community faithfully to engage in conversation that deals (like prayer) with the messiness of life and preparation.
In part three, Smith provides helpful insights for the community so that its members can sustain conversation amid difficult times and circumstances.
Throughout the book, Smith is inviting the church to embody a counter-cultural practice that can serve to shine the light of God’s kingdom in a world that has lost the ability to talk together.
Participatory Worship
It seems to go without saying, but Smith says it anyway: “Conversation is by nature participatory” (113). All too often church leaders lament the consumer mentality of so many Christians, yet rarely do we as leaders invite our people to participate, aside from perhaps singing, or participating in small groups where we hope conversation occurs. This book challenges us to ask whether we also adequately equip people faithfully to participate.
In order for active participation to happen, we need Smith’s grander view of conversation as “a means to discern how the Holy Spirit is moving amid our body as a whole” (42). To illustrate, he explains that “Our most important work as the community of God’s people is to discern the direction of God’s leading together and then to bear witness to the existence and nature of this dance, inviting others to join with us in following its God-breathed rhythms” (92).
For Smith, conversation is less about solving problems or theological disputes, and more about discerning how God is always already moving in the community and then faithfully participating in that activity. Local churches can use these conversations to invite all members to utilize their gifts for the sake of the community, inside and outside the church.
Radical Kinship
As community members participate in deeper communication with one another, discerning God’s direction and faithfully using their gifts to live it out, they will naturally develop affectionate bonds with one another and with Jesus. Or to use the biblical image, they will abide with Jesus and each other. Smith writes, “Abiding with another person means remaining in a relationship with a posture that allows one to receive the Christ-given gifts of the other” (100).
Unfortunately, this is not our natural posture. We naturally gravitate toward homogeneity, not difference. Our culture inculcates us to live and relate based on stereotypes of other people “rather than doing the slow and challenging work of getting to know them” (104). For Smith, this deep abiding is rooted in social trinitarianism, which emphasizes the communal being of God.
Smith writes, “God is a community of persons, a community that is open to humankind in all our woundedness and immaturity, making a space for us to participate in and contribute to the reign of God on earth as it is in heaven” (17). Because of God’s inherent relationality, he invites people to share in this relationality with him and others.
Active Disciple-making
Smith argues that “Conversation is an essential discipline that helps us cultivate the sort of faithful presence for which we were created” (25). Conversation is never the end, rather it is about becoming the sort of people who abide with Jesus and embody him to the world. While Smith’s book has some practical tips and tools to help, he is more concerned with how we talk to one another than what we talk about. He writes, “Our primary end in conversation should not be doing but being” (109).
Learning to have the sorts of conversations that Smith promotes equips the Body of Christ to present to the world a radical counter-cultural way of being and living. This is the Way that Jesus calls his disciples to. Through participation in deep and sustained conversations that can weather even strong disagreements, Smith suggests that Jesus followers are participating in an active process that makes better disciples of themselves and of others.
As a church embraces this vision, the community will inevitably have to deal with resistance from outsiders as well as from insiders. But as Smith points out, “One of the greatest and most winsome virtues of conversation is that it embraces resistance—allowing it to be spoken and discerned as part of the way forward, rather than simply stifling it” (44).
Rather than avoiding the difficulties all believers inevitably deal with in their spiritual lives, such as resistance, conversation embraces and allows believers to discern how Jesus is actually present even in the midst of difficulties and messiness.
Healing Fragmentation
Another reason conversation is an important discipline for the church today is the fragmentation all of us experience both in the world around us and in our own lives. It is perhaps easier to recognize external fragmentation that divides culture and society, but conversation also enables us to identify—and to deal with—more personal internal forms of fragmentation that impede our own lives.
Smith writes, “We do best when we acknowledge this internal conflict and submit ourselves to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in our church communities, which binds us together and heals us” (148). In short, being in conversation with others helps us to overcome fragmentation in all aspects of our lives. Through conversation we devote ourselves to each other, and over time begin to see the overlapping common interests that unite us.